


Low Life

by kittydesade



Category: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remy trips over an old man he met once, under fairly memorable circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Low Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ponderosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/gifts).



Remy was slopping along the Rue Saint Louis when he tripped over him. Literally tripped over him, Logan's legs stretched out onto the cobblestones and were solid as iron bars against his boots. " _Merde_..." he swore, "Get outta the road y'damned f--" It was only when he looked closer that he realized who it was. "Well, damn me for a dog-blind fool. What the hell happened to you, _mon cher._ "

Logan didn't respond. If he was conscious at all, which Remy was increasingly coming to doubt, the man reeked of stale alcohol and sweat. Nothing more scatalogical, not all the smells you picked up from slumping down in doorways, but enough to give a sign of being passed out or knocked out. Passed out, Remy judged. Too much booze, too much exhaustion.

He kicked the unconscious man's ankle. "You better get up, 'fore the po-lice get you." Logan didn't respond, as Remy had expected, but it made him feel a little better to say something. "Right, then. Don't say Remy never warned you."

Two row houses and a bar later and he kicked his heel into the stones and scowled at the sky. "This is your revenge, ain't it? All those times I got to just walk away, this is some kinda punishment. You a fickle woman, milady."

Fate had no answers for him, but she never did anyway.

  


* * *

  


"You a heavy sonnabitch," Remy muttered, dropping Logan in the middle of his living room while he rolled out his shoulders and went for a glass of water and a cold beer. Water first. "Guess you got out all right, though, don't see no new scars."

Talking to the man kept him from feeling too much like he'd just brought a corpse home; Logan was cold and wet. From the rain, more like, than from being dead, but after he'd found the man with a bullet hole in his skull he wasn't going to rule anything out. Anyway, wasn't like Logan was the best at conversation, but it also kept Remy from having to decide what to do until the last possible moment.

"Guess I better get you on the..." couch. Which was several feet away and over a glass coffee table. Remy grimaced. "Second thought, maybe you better stay where you lay, I bring the couch over to you."

Which he did, after a manner of speaking. Pillows under Logan's head, making sure he wouldn't clock himself on the coffee table when he woke up if he happened to sit up at the same time, though that was more on account of his glass coffee table than Logan's head. Too rainy to go out, most people would stay indoors on a night like this had turned into. And he didn't like the sound of leaving Logan on his own in his apartment. Could get a little messier than he wanted to live. "Online poker it is, I guess," Remy grumbled. He preferred the real touch of velvet, the slip-slide of the cards through his hands.

Another hour, hour and a half later and he was shuffling cards while waiting for his opponents in the five games he had running to make their moves, just to feel that sensation again. He was up a couple thou, too. Not a bad night's work. "You thirsty? There's beer in the fridge, water in the tap."

Logan creaked to his feet, but Remy didn't look around and didn't make the mistake of thinking that just because the other man moved slow meant he wasn't prepared for violence, should it come to that. Way Logan had been, he probably was moving slow 'cause he hurt or to make Remy think he was hurt more than not being awake.

"Where am I? And who the hell are you?"

He swiveled around in his chair, spreading his hands. "I didn't know better, I'd be hurt. Remy LeBeau is my name, and this is my place."

Logan looked around. Remy decided that scowl wasn't personal, the man just weren't capable of being friendly. "This is yours?" One hand flapped at the Steinlen on the wall, the black leather sofa. Deep burgundy rug. "All this..."

Remy rose up out of his chair, prepared to defend his honor and the honor of this lovely studio he called home, but Logan had already stopped. Didn't seem to know what he wanted to say next. Not that he couldn't fill in, look like a penthouse for a gigolo, Hugh Hefner, something like that. He'd heard it before, weren't the first time someone took a dislike to his personal style. Or to his habit of collecting on debts without notifying the holder, but that was another matter entirely.

This didn't seem like any of that, though. Like he'd had the words on reflex, but couldn't think of them when he tried to think. The gambler tilted his head. "You really don't remember, do you?"

Armor-piercing words. Logan spun without knowing why he reacted so violent, almost fell right against the glass. Would have, if Remy hadn't rushed to half-knock him sideways and into the couch. Almost fell on top of him, too. They tangled up in arms and legs for a second while both of them tried to get up at once, then Remy pushed himself up and off of the arm of the couch, rocking to his feet and pivoting around to face Logan from the safe side of the damn thing.

"Goddamn ..." The curse cut off, this time because Logan pushed his hand through his hair and had to get ahold of himself. "My head hurts."

If he didn't know what he knew about Logan, might think that was true. Remy shook his head. "Your head hurts 'cause you don't know all the things you think you should know. Wish I could help you, _cher_ , but I don't know much about you either."

"Then why'd you bring me here?" He scowled at Remy, sunk into the corner of the couch. "If you don't know who I am, why am I here? You don't exactly look like the kindness of strangers."

Come to that, he didn't know his own self why he'd brought him in here, except Logan was at least decent people. "Second to last time I saw you, I was dropping you off to deal with some people. Enemies of yours. Just so happened, they were also enemies of mine. Figured I owed you one for that."

Logan's forehead wrinkled up. "Enemies?"

"Old news."

Neither of them said anything for a little while. Remy figured Logan was dealing with that, with everything he remembered from the last six months or so, trying to put it together. He didn't have much more to offer the other man, so he let him think it over, grabbing another couple of beers from the fridge and putting one on a coaster on a coffee table.

"Heh, thanks."

Remy grinned over at him, saluted him with his beer and held up a piece of wall.

Another couple of minutes and Logan stood up again, this time a lot less shaky. He moved out from the couch and started to circle the room, slow and easy, getting his bearings. Remy stayed where he was, watching. To make sure the other man didn't break his furniture by passing out onto it.

"Really?" Logan pointed at the Steinlen.

He shrugged. "I like it."

"It's a cliche."

Remy's smirk crept out a bit. "How would you know?"

Logan smirked right back. "I've been to a few brothels lately."

"Ouch." True enough, though. And at least he sounded some better.

He circled around, running a hand over the edge of the bookshelf and then leaning in front of it for several minutes, studying the titles. Most of the books were the kind Remy kept for their titles, things he kept 'cause they looked good on his shelf. Mixed in with those were the books he liked, curled up with on a rainy day when it wasn't worth going outside. He wondered if Logan could tell the difference. Or if he cared to try and find out.

"Keep thinking you should have some fuzzy dice hanging here somewhere or something," Logan commented, looking up at the ceiling, chandelier hanging from a safe distance. Over at Remy standing by the bar. Remy snorted, didn't reply in words. Just with a smirk that said fuzzy dice were too crass for him. He liked having some style, at least.

Logan stopped in front of the picture of the blonde woman lounging on a rooftop in the French Quarter, hung opposite where Remy was standing and right outside the bedroom nook. "This wasn't taken by a professional." Remy's smile turned brittle and shook, just for a second.

"Actually, it was. She ain't a model, though. Wasn't."

"Wasn't..." Logan turned. Eyebrows up, a look Remy remembered from the first couple of times they'd met, more put together and less all scattered, and right now put together in a shape that disbelieved his bland comment. "You knew her."

"She was my wife." Even that bit of a smile faded. "My _Belle_."

"Your wife?" The eyebrows rose a little higher.

Remy shook his head, moving around the couch and over by the window, though he turned back into the room at the last second when he realized he was about to become a parody of brooding. "That was a long time ago, _cher_. In another country." His lips peeled back from his teeth. "And besides, the wench is dead."

"Cute."

They stared at each other for several minutes. Logan didn't ask, even with his memories gone he knew better than to ask. Remy didn't volunteer anything, though he put away the teeth. Finally Logan came back around the back of the couch, full circle. Remy didn't push off from the wall until the other man leaned one hand on the leather back, head bowed like it meant something. "Yeah, you in no shape to go anywhere tonight, _cher_ ," he murmured, coming up in front of him and making an attempt at turning Logan by his shoulder. Only an attempt, 'cause he stepped away when Logan shrugged him off. Better to step away than get pushed into a window.

"I'm fine," Logan growled, and Remy interrupted him between one word and the other.

"Don't con a con man, you ain't any good at it. Not with your head all scrambled and your memories missing. You safe here now, might as well make use of it while I'm offering it to you. Come morning, you can figure out what you wanna do."

Logan's head came up.

"That dog-eyed stare don't work on me."

Logan muttered something that Remy ignored about the Cajun being too stupid to understand when he was being glared at, but he did turn towards the bedroom nook. Remy snickered behind him. "And don't think you're gonna get to crawl into bed with me or something creepy like that..." he pointed over his shoulder. Remy pressed his fingertips to his chest and opened his eyes wide and pretend-shocked.

"Wouldn't dream of it, _cher_. I like my bed companions a little more soft around the edges, little less ..." He didn't know how much Logan knew about his claws, either. "Hairy."

"Heh." Logan gave him the rude finger. Might be he didn't know about those claws of his after all. Somehow, though, Remy didn't see him going six months without losing his temper even once and popping claw at someone. Wasn't going to bring it up, even if that were the case.

He leaned against the window this time and watched Logan stagger to the bed. "Get those shoes off, too, I just changed the sheets." Logan didn't say anything, but he did kick his shoes off before he fell into bed, crawled up around the pillow and let out a couple of long, deep breaths. Whatever got the man down and in the doorway Remy'd found him in, it was bad. Not injured, not sick, but Logan was 'bout as exhausted as Remy'd ever seen any man, a state he'd been in a couple times himself. Neither time was something he wanted to think about too hard.

In a few minutes some kind of sound came wafting out from the pillows, something that sounded like a more tortured sibling of snoring. Remy shook his head, laughing to himself just soft enough to keep from waking his unintended guest, went and pulled down the guest linens from the closet. Sure and he could sleep on the couch one night. Like he'd told the man, come morning they'd figure out what to do. And morning always came sooner than you wanted, in his experience.

Sheet and a blanket on the couch, and Remy dragged the other blankets over Logan, tucking them in around his shoulder with the same gentleness he treated all his lovely women. Refrained from doing any hair-smoothing or forehead petting, though. "You sleep good, now," he murmured, folding his arms, standing over the exhausted and already sleeping man. "Remy take good care of you."


End file.
